can anyone give there knowledge about routinely shooting high pressure loads from a beretta Ureka 2 20 ga? I shoot alot of shells for hunting and some for skeet/trap that are around 11,ooo psi. It is rather hard to find low pressure load data for a twenty that are the right FPS for what I need.

So I guess my questions to you would be can my shotgun handle these loads long term? will a semi-auto do better with higher pressure loads? worse? what kind of psi do factory 20 ga ammo run?

I shoot The Federal PF204 shells for pheasant. These are 1 oz lead loads with a muzzle velocity of 1350 fps. This is a commercially produced factory load which is well within the factory specs for any modern shotgun.

We used to load 20 gauge shells for hunting using Winchester 540 powder, which is no longer available. Hodgdon (web site link above) has some fairly high velocity loads listed. If you can't find one listed there to suit your needs, I suggest you contact them for more information.

We stopped loading 20 gauge hunting ammunition because we only shoot a couple of boxes of hunting shells per year, so it just didn't seem to be worth the trouble to save a few dollars per box. Bill Malcolm

I'm trying many different hulls but I've gotten the best patterns out of the STS/AA hulls so far(in 7/8 oz loads) with waa20 wads.
The Fed's patterned good but I need to try a different wad- with 1 oz loads there is no room for the shot and the crimps were really bad.

If 11,000s not really that much pressure though, then I should be fine.

Skip, The 20 ga. is normally loaded at 1200 fps. If 12,000 psi. is max and you are loading at 11,000 psi. I would consider that in the high end. Find a nice load at 1,200 fps and add a foot of lead. LOL The 20 ga. is not your reach way out there kind of gun. That's were the 12 ga. comes in. There's give and take on both ga.'s. Good Luck and Break-em all. Jeff